Unfortunately there are no good and extensive components for QT. No such thing as DevExpress or TMS. Yet its inbuild Table widgets can be extended quite a lot.

If CodeGear fail to deliver a MacOSX building Delphi any time soon, I guess I will have to migrate my already 350’000 lines of code to C++ using QT.

http://www.nbdtech.com/blog/archive/2009/05/25/what-percentage-of-users-have-the-.net-framework-installed-and.aspx

Interesting write-up.

>If anyone has good experince in writing nice GUI applications with C++ for different platforms

I am pretty happy with C++/Qt on Windows and Mac. And Qt will be available under LGPL from v4.5. See:
http://successfulsoftware.net/2009/01/14/qt-to-be-available-for-free-under-lgpl/

You shouldn’t need a lot of conditional defines – Qt hides most of the platform differences pretty well.

I have a project which is about 300’000 lines of pure source code and only one third party library DevExpress available for both Delphi and .NET.

MY .NET FRAMEWORK attempt:

I tried to move it to .NET 2.0 (I earn my living as .NET Developer). And managed to move over 170’000 to it when I got … bored. I am sure I can complete the transition but for what:
- lose my very strong native protection. My program has been cracked only once 3 years ago (and not very well if I may say so).
- move to a Framework does not everybody was
- lose the ability to “inject” some ASM here and there either for performance or just for the fun of it.
- end up with twice large distribution. Yes! After I ported 170’000 lines of code with the very same graphics used in Delphi I ended up with ~ 20 MB executable as opposed to the 14 MB Delphi one.
- and my source code is freely available for anyone. I have tested those Spices.NET, XenoCode, Dotfuscator and I am not very satisfied with the final result.

My JAVA attempt:

I also tried migrating to Java. And I stumbled upon one HUGE problem
- there are simple NO good quiality professional third party libraries. Please, if anyone has stubled upon somethinig like DevExpress WinForms suite for Java, let me know. I only found JIDE and it is not the best thing I have ever seen.
- and again anyone can run a JAD over your source code
- and not everyone has Java
- and the Swing is a bit buggy. Yes, it is! (Have you tried wring your own XP Border column header)
- multiplatform support is cool but not that cool to lose my great looking UI (99% of the great look in my app comes from their components)

My Flex attempt:
- I also tried Flex. Nice one BUT:
- No good documentation if any at all. (Try comparing the number of google result for “C# + MD5″ and “Flex + MD5″)
- You HAVE to write the back-end in again .NET, Java or Code Fusion (for Christ sake). If they managed to make a ActionScript backend web service developement, I would have been pleased.
- And again…how many really good professional components are out there for Flex

My Silverlight attempt:
- First of all. Am I a dummy or is Microsoft constantly lying. Everyone says “Silverlight runs on Linux” but when you try to understand how it ends up with “Moonlight is out”. I am not a fan ot Novell, at all.
- Silverlight is better than Flex at least in being able to write both the front and beck end in the same language C#.
- I think Silverlight has lots of potential but MS has to fix lots of stuff there.
- And again installing some additional plugin is not the favouritte thing for an usual user to do

So. I end up again with my Delphi again.
I started the project with Delphi 5 and than upgraded through
Delphi 6
Delphi 7
Delphi 2005
Delphi 2006
Delphi 2007
Delphi 2009
and all upgrades went smoothly like a breeze. I think I may end up using Delphi 2015 in the end.

So lets say something negative for Delphi too, shall we:
- Pascal is not a very “fancy” language to learn, though I fancy it a lot
- We still miss some LINQ, Garbage Collection, Attributes stuff there. I can live without them very well but would like to try a GC at least for the try
- DevExpress components (which I heavily use) are updated a bit after the .NET ones. I still miss the DX Reports library from the .NET Suite.
- I know Borland/Inprise/Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero had tough times but I am pretty sure they will survive this financial crisis too.
- Pascal/Object Pascal/Delphi language became bloated with some contructs which give the language the C/C++ “scary look” for the beginners. For example how often you use the cdecl or variant records or reintroduce, seriously?
- Chrome is a good think in general but I don’t think we will see many job offers “Searching for an experienced Chrome deveoper”

And what about Mac someone can ask. I have an oppinion there too:
- XCode sucks. It seems like a Notepad++ with some fancy icons. Maybe it is just me not being able to hug this great “simplicity is good” idea.
- Objectice C is a language which I would like to learn after Perl. I wonder now someone in 21 century would invent a new language and write “Hello Word” like this

#import “HelloWorld.h”
@implementation HelloWorld
- (void)sayHello
{
NSLog(@”Hello, world, at %@”, [NSCalendarDate calendarDate]);
}
@end

Objective C is not my language for sure.
- I haven’t found any disent UI library. I know I should stick with the plain and simple design but I really need this DbTreeGridListView.

So what’s left:
- VB6. No thanks.
- C. Too complicated
- C++. Good choice in general. GCC is real pain for multiplatform (all those coditional defines) but at the end works well. If anyone has good experince in writing nice GUI applications with C++ for different platforms please share with me gaddlord att mtgstudio dott com.
- Python. No good GUI libraries. Not many sources to read from.

So. Delphi is the answer for me.

My applications are small, I don’t want any installation, I want to have all my files in one folder without registry etc. That is not possible with MS policy.

So I think that I’ll try with new Builder C++ 2009 from CodeGear/Embarcadero. I already know that VCL is excellent framework, Delphi is very strong, now it is possible to use Delphi components and even sources in Builder projects… So I’ll get my C++ coding, and Delphi if here if some problem arise. And, it seems to me that Delphi/Builder comunity is weaking up. That is very important.

I’ll switch to .net after Microsoft switches Office and IE to .net (maybe never?).